A community art project: growing peace stitch by stitch

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We’re sure to be knitting, making, thinking, and working for peace over the coming months … but from places of silence and repose near and far. To be certain, there will be plenty to share after the summer holidays.

Here’s hoping your summer is as productive as I’m hoping mine will be.

Dr. El Aish (Palestinian physician from Gaza) – fixture on Israeli TV, believed in co-existence, worked in Israel, spoke fluent Hebrew – nontheless believes in the integrity of Israel’s leaders, their professional and moral capacity to investigate the attack on his home and death of his children, and to speak the truth. He says he hopes his daughters’ deaths are not in vain, that his family’s tragedy will open the eyes and minds of Israelis to what has happened. He wants and investigation.

“I fully believe in the moral [sic] of the Israeli leaders. I count on their professionalism, that they are serious, and they have the courage to say the truth. They committed a mistake.”

Dr. Ish, worked in co-existence projects, three of four daughters killed in Israeli military strike

As tension increases in Gaza between Israel and Palestine, it is important to support and empower long-term peacekeeping efforts. With the recent Israeli violence in the news, now is the time to act. Donate to one of the projects below that address the well-known challenge of sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Other direct contributions to providing relief in Gaza can be made to CARE (for critical food relief),

NIF SHATIL’s southern office staff live in Be’er Sheva , Kiryat Gat, Rahat, Sderot and other communities – all within the range of rocket fire from Gaza. supported relief work of NGO’s

Shatil’s remarkable efforts to make relief management resoures available, facilitate the 450 ngo’s work here, here, and here – SHATIL Be’er Sheva staff is in the process of mapping the war-related needs of 450 non- profit organizations and grassroots groups in the south.

joint protest – 300 Jews and Arabs from the Wadi Ara region of Israel demonstrated against the harming of innocent civilians in Gaza and the surrounding Israeli region. The rally was organized by NIF grantee Awareness for You, which runs empowerment courses for Arab women in the village of Kfar Kara.

Members of the NIF family, in cluding — Adalah: Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI),

I don’t know about anyone else, but the violence in Gaza over the past three weeks has left me in something of a state of mental and emotional paralysis. Since the first Israeli strike in Gaza, I’ve been knitting birds … white doves, yellow birds, red birds, blue birds, birds, birds, birds, … my personal vigil, to create an aviary for peace.

This evening, as a UN compound smoulders in Gaza City, all I can think of is how to use my hands, my needles, even my heart, to memorialize the many lost civilians.

Green often symbolizes sincerity and hope, optimism, generosity, and renewal. And misfortune. I recently learned that green is associated with Islam.

Tonight I’ll knit a green bird, a TikkunTree leaf bird, a mourning dove, a mournful green dove. Hoping for peace with every single stitch.

With the renewed violence in Israel and Gaza, it seemed even more important than ever to find a way to express the work of the TikkunTree: bringing more of us together to contribute to eventual peace in Israel-Palestine.

While I don’t wear a kippah (yarmulke), I do believe that the skullcap – as a ritual garment – symbolizes prayer and the hope for peace in a special way. This needle-felted dove kippah is the beginning of the new year’s journey.

In the face of one’s own powerlessness to change the actions of those waging violence against one another, we can choose to walk in the path of peace by affirmatively pursuing peaceful prayer, conversation and action.

The TikkunTree and this site have been dormant, too long perhaps, but then there was an election campaign to wage and win. And it was won! So now, with the news about President-Elect Obama’s cabinet and policy choices accumulating on a weekly basis, there’s even more reason to count on a reasoned American approach to building peace in Israel-Palestine.

Although I was thoroughly immersed in work for the campaign and change in American government since mid-summer, plenty of knitting for peace and politics happened along the way.

The broohaha over Sarah Palin’s nomination prompted a brief flight into fanciful crochet, and I spent a few weeks feverishly crocheting pigs in lipstick as I registered voters. These joined a special “Obamulke” (Obama + yarmulke; featured on JudaicaJournal!) I embroidered as donations to the pool of items auctioned by Ravelry’s Knitters for Obama group (which raised over $32,000 for the campaign!). The many hours spent in my local campaign headquarters inspired a few special hats, and my efforts to increase the Jewish vote for Obama prompted a few special Oy-bama projects as well (more here).

The Beijing Summer Olympics in August inspired nearly four thousand craftspeople to make and finish tens of thousands of projects. As a participant in the “Hat Dash”, I produced five small hats for the China Care Orphans Project.

During the final months of the campaign I managed to squeeze out enough spare time to finish a number of special projects. In honor of the Jewish New Year, I finished a knitted shofar and pomegranate, symbols of the holiday. For Sukkot, I added some new knitted and felted etrogs to our family sukkah, to make the space even more hospitable to visiting interfaith and peace groups. (more here)

Much energy went into creating a set of flags for the 198 Countries Peace Project. I signed on to the project early, claiming the flags of Israel and Palestine for (for obvious reasons), as well as the flag of Cambodia (in honor of my friend Onn, a survivor of the genocide). I tackled Cambodian flag first in August, exploring ways to translate into knitting the special structural details of the 11th-c. Wat Kohear Nokor temple represented on the flag.

From the outset, I knew that I’d execute the flags of Israel and Palestine jointly, to reflect my understanding of the ways in which these two peoples inextricably bound to the same texts and terrain. I eventually settled on joining the flags by way of the intertwined (cabled) trunk of a olive tree (of life), rather than the conjoined bodies of twins, which is how I’ve formulated the relationship previously (as here). The cabling was more than a bit of a challenge, and more than a bit imperfect, much like the process of achieving a just peace for these peoples. But the process of sorting out ideas, sketching designs, and working out the technical details, offered plenty of opportunities to think through new ways to participate personally in the larger process in future.

And now? I’ve plenty of ideas for new leaves for the TikkunTree … anyone want to try a few?

‘If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.’
Lin-Chi Buddhist proverb (from Craft Unbound)

What’s often most astonishing about the internet is the way in which paths cross virtually across the most incredible distances. Australia had always counted among the more exotic places in the imagination of my youth … the pull of coral landscapes, aboriginal painting, the sound of the didgeradoo, the miracle of a kangaroo’spouch, to name a few resonances. In the course of my occasional virtual travels (aka “surfing the internet), I’ve stumbled across some pretty amazing craft work. But earlier this week I was amazed to learn that the TikkunTree project has been included among the on the Craft Unbound blog. he Craft Unbound blog continues the exploration begun in Australian Kevin Murray’s Craft Unbound: Makes The Common Precious (read the preface, or a review) of new developments in contemporary craft, especially in the “poor craft” movement – “the creative strategy of using materials that have little or no value”. When I read the preface, I was intrigued by Murray’s distinction between craft artists according to their “method of approaching the ordinary:

Gatherers draw from the […] land to produce work, while Fossickers discover materials in manufactured environments. Gleaners use what gets left behind, such as packaging, and Alchemists look to the physical transformation of materials. Dissectors expose beauty through the act of destruction, but Liberators take the precious out of the gallery and onto the street.

I’m flattered that the TikkunTree is counted among the “unbound” in Murray’s estimation, a participant in the “art of the ordinary”. But more importantly, I hope that the TikkunTree’s “liberation” from the gallery conveys my conviction that the business of making peace is an ordinary one, something that grows out of ordinary thoughts, conversation, connection, commitment, and (hopefully) eventual action. Making a single leaf is a simple act, expressing a simple commitment – to peace. So if the TikkunTree is to truly contribute to the realization of peace in Israel-Palestine, it can do so only by the accumulation of ordinary acts of peace-ful making. Will you knit (or crochet, sew, felt, fold …) a leaf or two, to make this virtual olive tree a real symbol of peace?

Well, the TikkunTree project is now included among the rank of Mid-East Peace projects and links on Richard Silverstein’s blog, Tikun Olam. If you aren’t familiar with Silverstein’s intelligent journalism, his blog is worth more than a cursory look – his essays on the politics, culture and ideas about Israeli-Arab peace never fail to provide interesting and/or useful information (especially his book reviews), and valuable analysis.